Island Girls

More fun in the sun with friends! After leaving the Philippines, it was time to meet up with Sara (friend and former colleague at Hershey) for some time in Indonesia. With 17,000 Indonesian islands to choose from – we landed on seeing a few really incredible ones. First up – Bali!!!!!

Around Ubud

Our first few hours on the island of Bali were certainly interesting ones. As it turned out, Sara and I arrived on the busiest day ever at the airport in Denpasar. The first order of business was trying to find a taxi out of the place to get to Ubud (which should have been about an hour drive). Four hours later we arrived at the hotel at 2am…ugh! Traffic was so badly gridlocked it took us 3 hours just to leave the grounds of the airport – WILD! But fortunately, that was the only misadventure during our time in Bali. Bali is truly amazing, such a unique and distinctive culture! Our adventures around the tourist capital of Ubud and the central part of the country were phenomenal!!

The coffee that Sara is drinking in the photo below (and that I also enjoyed) is called Luwak coffee.It is made from the coffee beans that an Asian Palm Civet ate and pooped out. Of course they clean and roast those beans in order to get them ready for making coffee. 😂 As it turns out, civets have discerning taste buds and only eat the best quality coffee beans. It makes for an incredibly smooth cup of coffee (feel free to leave your potty jokes in the comments 😂)!

Monkey Business

We visited the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary on the outskirts of Ubud – which is home to 1260 monkeys. And yes, that many monkeys makes for lots of monkey business. There are very strict rules on what you can’t do around the monkeys. No screaming, making eye contact with them or smiling at them – these are all signs of aggression and could cause them to attack. Yikes 😬! And you had to keep sunglasses, water bottles and food all tucked away…all lovely souvenirs for the monkeys if left out in the open 😂

More Videos

A few more videos for you to check out. The first, a video of the Tegenungan Waterfall – because a blog post isn’t complete without a waterfall. And the last video is some footage of a Bali festival which was taking place to celebrate one of the 5 elements of life – metal. We saw local priests blessing things made out of metal (cars, boats etc). Throughout the year, each of the 5 elements has its day of celebration.